Bank of Thailand Working on Central Bank Cryptocurrency

The last couple of months have brought forward a new trend – central bank digital currencies. After adopting its first cryptocurrency-related legislative framework, Thailand is now reportedly developing its very own coin, in collaboration with several banks.

The plans for the Inthanon CBDC were announced by the Central Bank of Thailand (BOT), which has partnered up with the country’s government alongside eight of the largest local commercial banks. These are the Bangkok Bank, Bank of Ayudhya, Krung Thai Bank, Siam Commercial Bank, Kasikorn Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Thanachart Bank, alongside the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

As part of the first stage of the program, the parties will work on designing and developing a prototype system, backed by the wholesale CBDC that will be used to transfer money between institutions. The cryptocurrency will be built using the R3 Corda platform, and according to the central bank: “The Inthanon initiative will cover the design, development and testing of fund transfers between financial institutions through the use of digital currency…It is expected that the first phase of the project will be completed within the first quarter of 2019”.

During the second stage of the project, the commercial banks will expand the system’s usage to facilitate third-party capital transfers alongside cross-border payments.

Thailand’s stance towards digital currencies is therefore quickly improving, granted the government has legalized a total of seven cryptocurrencies, and is in the process of reviewing others. Additionally, legislation for ICO projects has also been adopted, which means that ICO start-ups need to apply for licenses prior to holding their token sales. It is believed that this will reduce the number of fraud ICOs, while also improving the quality of the market.

It is important to point out the fact that so far, several countries and central banks are working on central bank cryptocurrencies. These include Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore. A similar project is also taking place in Venezuela, where President Maduro has released the Petro coin.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, we are witnessing the beginning of monetary digitalization, and most likely the end of cash.